She stopped.

"What?" he asked.

"Whether, if there is an angel in me, it mightn't be as well to trot it out."

The self-consciousness of the slang prevented him from hating it.

"Ah!" he said. "When have you wondered?"

"Lately. It's your fault. You have insisted so much upon the existence of the celestial being that at last I've become almost credulous. It's very absurd and I'm still hanging back."

"Call credulity belief and you needn't be ashamed of it."

"And if I believe, what then?"

"Then a thousand things. Belief sheds strength through all the tissues of the mind, the heart, the temperament. Disbelief sheds weakness. The one knits together, the other dissolves."

"There are people who think angels frightfully boring company."

"I know."

"Well then?"

Suddenly Robin got up and spoke almost brutally.

"Do you think I don't see that you are trying to find out from me what I think would be the best means of—"

The look in her face stopped him.

"I think the water is boiling," he said, going over to the lamp.

"It ought to bubble," she answered quietly.

He lifted up the lid of the silver bowl and peeped in.

"It is bubbling."

For a moment he was busy pouring the water into the teapot. While he did this there was a silence between them. Lady Holme got up from the sofa and walked about the room. When she came to the "Danseuse de Tunisie" she stopped in front of it.

"How strange that fan is," she said.

Robin shut the lid of the teapot and came over to her.

"Do you like it?"

"The fan?"

"The whole thing?"

"It's lovely, but I fancy it would have been lovelier without the fan."

"Why?"

She considered, holding her head slightly on one side and half closing her eyes.

"The woman's of eternity, but the fan's of a day," she said presently. "It belittles her, I think. It makes her chic when she might have been—"

She stopped.

"Throw away your fan!" he said in a low, eager voice.

"I?"

"Yes. Be the woman, the eternal woman. You've never been her yet, but you could be. Now is the moment. You're unhappy."

"No," she said sharply.

"Yes, you are. Viola, don't imagine I can't understand. You care for him and he's hurting you—hurting you by being just himself, all he can ever be. It's the fan he cares for."

"And you tell me to throw it away!"

She spoke with sudden passion. They stood still for a moment in front of the statuette, looking at each other silently. Then Robin said, with a sort of bitter surprise:

"But you can't love him like that!"

"I do."

It gave her an odd, sharp pleasure to speak the truth to him.

"What are you going to do, then?" he asked, after a pause.

He spoke without emotion, accepting the situation.

"To do? What do you mean?"

"Come and sit down. I'll tell you."

He took her hand and led her back to the sofa. When she had sat down, he poured out tea, put in cream and gave it to her.

"Nothing to eat," she said.

He poured out his tea and sat down in a chair opposite to her, and close to her.

"May I dare to speak frankly?" he asked. "I've known you so long, and I've—I've loved you very much, and I still do."

"Go on!" she answered.

"You thought your beauty was everything, that so long as it lasted you were safe from unhappiness. Well, to-day you are beautiful, and yet—"

"But what does he care for?" she said. "What do men care for? You pretend that it's something romantic, something good even. Really, it's impudent—just that—cold and impudent. You're a fool, Robin, you're a fool!"

"Am I? Thank God there are men—and men. You can't be what Carey said."

For once he had spoken incautiously. He had blurted out something he never meant to say.

"Mr. Carey!" she exclaimed quickly, curiously. "What did Mr. Carey say I was?"

"Oh—"

"No, Robin, you are to tell me. No diplomatic lies."

A sudden, almost brutal desire came into him to tell her the truth, to revel in plain speaking for once, and to see how she would bear it.

"He said you were an egoist, that you were fine enough in your brilliant selfishness to stand quite alone—"

A faint smile moved the narrow corners of her lips at the last words. He went on.

"—That your ideal of a real man, the sort of man a woman loses her head for, was—"

He stopped. Carey's description of the Lord Holme and Leo Ulford type had not been very delicate.

"Was—?" she said, with insistence. "Was—?"

Robin thought how she had hurt him, and said:

"Carey said, a huge mass of bones, muscles, thews, sinews, that cares nothing for beauty."

"Beauty! That doesn't care for beauty! But then—?"

"Carey meant—yes, I'm sure Carey meant real beauty."

"What do you mean by 'real beauty'?"

"An inner light that radiates outward, but whose abiding-place is hidden—perhaps. But one can't say. One can only understand and love."

"Oh. And Mr. Carey said that. Was he—was he at all that evening as he was at Arkell House? Was he talking nonsense or was he serious?"

"Difficult to say! But he was not as he was at Arkell House. Which knows you best—Carey or I?"

"Neither of you. I don't know myself."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. The only thing I know is that you can't tell me what to do."

"No, I can't."

"But perhaps I can tell you."

She put down her cup and looked at him with a sort of grave kindness that he had never seen in her face before.

"What to do?"

"Yes."

"Well?"

"Give up loving the white angel. Perhaps it isn't there. Perhaps it doesn't exist. And if it does—perhaps it's a poor, feeble thing that's no good to me, no good to me."

Suddenly she put her arms on the back of the couch, leaned her face on them and began to cry gently.

Robin was terribly startled. He got up, stretched out his hands to her in an impulsive gesture, then drew them back, turned and went to the window.

She was crying for Fritz.

That was absurd and horrible. Yet he knew that those tears came from the heart of the hidden woman he had so long believed in, proved her existence, showed that she could love.



CHAPTER XII

AS Lady Holme had foreseen, the impertinent mimicry of Miss Schley concentrated a great deal of attention upon the woman mimicked. Many people, accepting the American's cleverness as a fashionable fact, also accepted her imitation as the imitation of a fact more surreptitious, and credited Lady Holme with a secret leading towards the improper never before suspected by them. They remembered the break between the Holmes and Carey, the strange scene at the Arkell House ball, and began to whisper many things of Lady Holme, and to turn a tide of pity and of sympathy upon her husband. On this tide Lord Holme and the American might be said to float merrily like corks, unabashed in the eye of the sun. Their intimacy was condoned on all sides as a natural result of Lady Holme's conduct. Most of that which had been accomplished by Lord and Lady Holme together after their reconciliation over the first breakfast was undone. The silent tongue began to wag, and to murmur the usual platitudes about the poor fellow who could not find sympathy at home and so was obliged, against his will, to seek for it outside.

All this Lady Holme had foreseen as she sat in her box at the British Theatre.

The wrong impression of her was enthroned. She had to reckon with it. This fact, fully recognised by her, made her wish to walk warily where otherwise her temper might have led her to walk heedlessly. She wanted to do an unusual thing, to draw her husband's attention to an intimacy which was concealed from the world—the intimacy between herself and Leo Ulford.

After her visit to the house in Half Moon Street she began to see a great deal of Leo Ulford. Carey had been right when he said that they would get on together. She understood him easily and thoroughly, and for that very reason he was attracted by her. Men delight to feel that a woman is understanding them; women that no man can ever understand them. Under the subtle influence of Lady Holme's complete comprehension of him, Leo Ulford's nature expanded, stretched itself as his long legs stretched themselves when his mind was purring. There was not much in him to reveal, but what there was he revealed, and Lady Holme seemed to be profoundly interested in the contents of his soul.

But she was not interested in the contents of his soul in public places on which the world's eye is fixed. She refused to allow Leo to do what he desired, and assumed an air of almost possessive friendship before Society. His natural inclination for the blatant was firmly checked by her. She cared nothing for him really, but her woman's instinct had divined that he was the type of man most likely to rouse the slumbering passion of Fritz, if Fritz were led to suspect that she was attracted to him. Men like Lord Holme are most easily jealous of the men who most closely resemble them. Their conceit leads them to put an exaggerated value upon their own qualities in others, upon the resemblance to their own physique exhibited by others.

Leo Ulford was rather like a younger and coarser Lord Holme. In him Lady Holme recognised an effective weapon for the chastisement, if not for the eventual reclamation, of her husband. It was characteristic of her that this was the weapon she chose, the weapon she still continued to rely on even after her conversation with Robin Pierce. Her faith in white angels was very small. Perpetual contact with the world of to-day, with life as lived by women of her order, had created within her far other faiths, faiths in false gods, a natural inclination to bow the knee in the house of Rimmon rather than before the altars guarded by the Eternities.

And then—she knew Lord Holme; knew what attracted him, what stirred him, what moved him to excitement, what was likely to hold him. She felt sure that he and such men as he yield the homage they would refuse to the angel to the siren. Instead of seeking the angel within herself, therefore, she sought the siren. Instead of striving to develope that part of her which was spiritual, she fixed all her attention upon that part of her which was fleshly, which was physical. She neglected the flame and began to make pretty patterns with the ashes.

Robin came to bid her good-bye before leaving London for Rome. The weeping woman was gone. He looked into the hard, white face of a woman who smiled. They talked rather constrainedly for a few minutes. Then suddenly he said:

"Once it was a painted window, now it's an iron shutter."

He got up from his chair and clasped his hands together behind his back.

"What on earth do you mean?" she asked, still smiling.

"Your face," he answered. "One could see you obscurely before. One can see nothing now."

"You talk great nonsense, Robin. It's a good thing you're going back to Rome."

"At least I shall find the spirit of beauty there," he said, almost with bitterness. "Over here it is treated as if it were Jezebel. It's trodden down. It's thrown to the dogs."

"Poor spirit!"

She laughed lightly.

"Do you understand what they're saying of you?" he went on.

"Where?"

"All over London."

"Perhaps."

"But—do you?"

"Perhaps I don't care to."

"They're saying—'Poor thing! But it's her own fault.'"

There was a silence. In it he looked at her hard, mercilessly. She returned his gaze, still smiling.

"And it is your own fault," he went on after a moment. "If you had been yourself she couldn't have insulted you first and humiliated you afterwards. Oh, how I hate it! And yet—yet there are moments when I am like the others, when I feel—'She has deserved it.'"

"When will you be in Rome?" she said.

"And even now," he continued, ignoring her remark, "even now, what are you doing? Oh, Viola, you're a prey to the modern madness for crawling in the dirt instead of walking upright in the sun. You might be a goddess and you prefer to be an insect. Isn't it mad of you? Isn't it?"

He was really excited, really passionate. His face showed that. There was fire in his eyes. His lips worked convulsively when he was not speaking. And yet there was just a faint ring of the accomplished orator's music in his voice, a music which suggests a listening ear—and that ear the orator's own.

Perhaps she heard it. At any rate his passionate attack did not seem to move her.

"I prefer to be what I am," was all she said.

"What you are! But you don't know what you are."

"And how can you pretend to know?" she asked. "Is a man more subtle about a woman than she is about herself?"

He did not answer for a moment. Then he said bluntly:

"Promise me one thing before I go away."

"I don't know. What is it?"

"Promise me not to—not to—"

He hesitated. The calm of her face seemed almost to confuse him.

"Well?" she said. "Go on."

"Promise me not to justify anything people are saying, not to justify it with—with that fellow Ulford."

"Good-bye," she answered, holding out her hand.

He recognised that the time for his advice had gone by, if it had ever been.

"What a way—what a way for us to—" he almost stammered.

He recovered his self-possession with an effort and took her hand.

"At least," he said in a low, quiet voice, "believe it is less jealousy that speaks within me than love—love for you, for the woman you are trampling in the dust."

He looked into her eyes and went out. She did not see him again before he left England. And she was glad. She did not want to see him. Perhaps it was the first time in her life that the affection of a man whom she really liked was distasteful to her. It made her uneasy, doubtful of herself just then, to be loved as Robin loved her.

Carey had come back to town, but he went nowhere. He was in bad odour. Sir Donald Ulford was almost the only person he saw anything of at this time. It seemed that Sir Donald had taken a fancy to Carey. At any rate, such friendly feeling as he had did not seem lessened after Carey's exhibition at Arkell House. When Carey returned to Stratton Street, Sir Donald paid him a visit and stayed some time. No allusion was made to the painful circumstances under which they had last seen each other until Sir Donald was on the point of going away. Then he said:

"You have not forgotten that I expect you at Casa Felice towards the end of August?"

Carey looked violently astonished.

"Still?" he said.

"Yes."

Suddenly Carey shot out his hand and grasped Sir Donald's.

"You aren't afraid to have a drunken beast like me in Casa Felice! It's a damned dangerous experiment."

"I don't think so."

"It's your own lookout, you know. I absolve you from the invitation."

"I repeat it, then."

"I accept it, then—again."

Sir Donald went away thoughtfully. When he reached the Albany he found Mrs. Leo Ulford waiting for him in tears. They had a long interview.

Many people fancied that Sir Donald looked more ghostly, more faded even than usual as the season wore on. They said he was getting too old to go about so much as he did, and that it was a pity Society "got such a hold" on men who ought to have had enough of it long ago. One night he met Lady Holme at the Opera. She was in her box and he in the stalls. After the second act she called him to her with a gay little nod of invitation. Lady Cardington had been with her during the act, but left the box when the curtain fell to see some friends close by. When Sir Donald tapped at the door Lady Holme was quite alone. He came in quietly—even his walk was rather ghostly—and sat down beside her.

"You don't look well," she said after they had greeted each other.

"I am quite well," he answered, with evident constraint.

"I haven't seen you to speak to since that little note of yours."

A very faint colour rose in his faded cheeks.

"After Miss Schley's first night?" he murmured.

His yellow fingers moved restlessly.

"Do you know that your son told me you would write?" she continued.

She was leaning back in her chair, half hidden by the curtain of the box.

"Leo!"

Sir Donald's voice was almost sharp and startling.

"How should he—you spoke about me then?"

There was a flash of light in his pale, almost colourless eyes.

"I wondered where you had gone, and he said you would write next day."

"That was all?"

"Why, how suspicious you are!"

She spoke banteringly.

"Suspicious! No—but Leo does not understand me very well. I was rather old when he was born, and I have never been able to be much with him. He was educated in England, and my duties of course lay abroad."

He paused, looking at her and moving his thin white moustache. Then, in an uneasy voice, he added:

"You must not take my character altogether from Leo."

"Nor you mine altogether from Miss Schley," said Lady Holme.

She scarcely knew why she said it. She thought herself stupid, ridiculous almost, for saying it. Yet she could not help speaking. Perhaps she relied on Sir Donald's age. Or perhaps—but who knows why a woman is cautious or incautious in moments the least expected? God guides her, perhaps, or the devil—or merely a bottle imp. Men never know, and that is why they find her adorable.

Sir Donald said nothing for a moment, only made the familiar movement with his hands that was a sign in him of concealed excitement or emotion. His eyes were fixed upon the ledge of the box. Lady Holme was puzzled by his silence and, at last, was on the point of making a remark on some other subject—Plancon's singing—when he spoke, like a man who had made up his mind firmly to take an unusual, perhaps a difficult course.

"I wish to take it from you," he said. "Give me the right one, not an imitation of an imitation."

She knew at once what he meant and was surprised. Had Leo Ulford been talking?

"Lady Holme," he went on, "I am taking a liberty. I know that. It's a thing I have never done before, knowingly. Don't think me unconscious of what I am doing. But I am an old man, and old men can sometimes venture—allowance is sometimes made for them. I want to claim that allowance now for what I am going to say."

"Well?" she said, neither hardly nor gently.

In truth she scarcely knew whether she wished him to speak or not.

"My son is—Leo is not a safe friend for you at this moment."

Again the dull, brick-red flush rose in his cheeks. There was an odd, flattened look just above his cheekbones near his eyes, and the eyes themselves had a strange expression as of determination and guilt mingled.

"Your son?" Lady Holme said. "But—"

"I do not wish to assume anything, but I—well, my daughter-in-law sometimes comes to me."

"Sometimes!" said Lady Holme.

"Leo is not a good husband," Sir Donald said. "But that is not the point. He is also a bad—friend."

"Why don't you say lover?" she almost whispered.

He grasped his knee with one hand and moved the hand rapidly to and fro.

"I must say of him to you that where his pleasure or his vanity is concerned he is unscrupulous."

"Why say all this to a woman?"

"You mean that you know as much as I?"

"Don't you think it likely?"

"Henrietta—"

"Who is that?"

"My daughter-in-law has done everything for Leo—too much. She gets nothing—not even gratitude. I am sorry to say he has no sense of chivalry towards women. You know him, I daresay. But do you know him thwarted?"

"Ah, you don't think so badly of me after all?" she said quickly.

"I—I think of you that—that—"

He stopped.

"I think that I could not bear to see the whiteness of your wings smirched by a child of mine." he added.

"You too!" she said.

Suddenly tears started into her eyes.

"Another believer in the angel!" she thought.

"May I come in?"

It was Mr. Bry's cold voice. His discontented, sleek face was peeping round the door.

Sir Donald got up to go.

As Lady Holme drove away from Covent Garden that night she was haunted by a feverish, embittering thought:

"Will everyone notice it but Fritz?"

Lord Holme indeed seemed scarcely the same man who had forbidden Carey to come any more to his house, who had been jealous of Robin Pierce, who had even once said that he almost wished his wife were an ugly woman. The Grand Turk nature within him, if not actually dead, was certainly in abeyance. He was so intent on his own affairs that he paid no heed at all to his wife's, even when they might be said to be also his. Leo Ulford was becoming difficult to manage, and Lord Holme still gaily went his way. As Lady Holme thought over Sir Donald's words she felt a crushing weight of depression sink down upon her. The brougham rolled smoothly on through the lighted streets. She did not glance out of the windows, or notice the passing crowds. In the silence and darkness of her own soul she was trying not to feel, trying to think.

A longing to be incautious, to do something startling, desperate, came to her.

It was evident that Mrs. Ulford had been complaining to Sir Donald about his son's conduct. With whom? Lady Holme could not doubt that it was with herself. She had read, with one glance at the fluttering pink eyelids, the story of the Leo Ulford's menage. Now, she was not preoccupied with any regret for her own cruelty or for another woman's misery. The egoism spoken of by Carey was not dead in her yet, but very much alive. As she sat in the corner of the brougham, pressing herself against the padded wall, she was angry for herself, pitiful for herself. And she was jealous—horribly jealous. That woke up her imagination, all the intensity of her. Where was Fritz to-night? She did not know. Suddenly the dense ignorance in which every human being lives, and must live to the end of time, towered above her like a figure in a nightmare. What do we know, what can we ever know of each other? In each human being dwells the most terrible, the most ruthless power that exists—the power of silence.

Fritz had that power; stupid, blundering, self-contented Fritz.

She pulled the check-string and gave the order, "Home!"

In her present condition she felt unable to go into Society.

When she got to Cadogan Square she said to the footman who opened the door:

"His lordship isn't in yet?"

"No, my lady."

"Did he say what time he would be in to-night?"

"No, my lady."

The man paused, then added:

"His lordship told Mr. Lucas not to wait up."

"Mr. Lucas" was Lord Holme's valet.

It seemed to Lady Holme as if there were a significant, even a slightly mocking, sound in the footman's voice. She stared at him. He was a thin, swarthy young man, with lantern jaws and a very long, pale chin. When she looked at him he dropped his eyes.

"Bring me some lemonade to the drawing-room in ten minutes," she said.

"Yes, my lady."

"In ten minutes, not before. Turn on all the lights in the drawing-room."

"Yes, my lady."

The man went before her up the staircase, turned on the lights, stood aside to let her pass and then went softly down. Lady Holme rang for Josephine.

"Take my cloak and then go to bed," she said.

Josephine took the cloak and went out, shutting the door.

"Ten minutes!" Lady Holme said to herself.

She sat down on the sofa on which she had sat for a moment alone after her song at the dinner-party, the song murdered by Miss Filberte. The empty, brilliantly-lit rooms seemed unusually large. She glanced round them with inward-looking eyes. Here she was at midnight sitting quite alone in her own house. And she wished to do something decisive, startling as the cannon shot sometimes fired from a ship to disperse a fog wreath. That was the reason why she had told the footman to come in ten minutes. She thought that in ten minutes she might make up her mind. If she decided upon doing something that required an emissary the man would be there.

She looked at the little silver box she had taken up that night when she was angry, then at the grand piano in the further room. The two things suggested to her two women—the woman of hot temper and the woman of sweetness and romance. What was she to-night, and what was she going to do? Nothing, probably. What could she do? Again she glanced round the rooms. It seemed to her that she was like an actress in an intense, passionate role, who is paralysed by what is called in the theatre "a stage wait." She ought to play a tremendous scene, now, at once, but the person with whom she was to play it did not come on to the stage. She had worked herself up for the scene. The emotion, the passion, the force, the fury were alive, were red hot within her, and she could not set them free. She remained alone upon the stage in a sort of horror of dumbness, a horror of inaction.

The footman came in quietly with the lemonade on a tray. He put it down on a table by Lady Holme.

"Is there anything else, my lady?"

She supposed that the question was meant as a very discreet hint to her that the man would be glad to go to bed. For a moment she did not reply, but kept him waiting. She was thinking rapidly, considering whether she would do the desperate thing or not, whether she would summon one of the actors for the violent scene her nature demanded persistently that night.

After the opera she had been due at a ball to which Leo Ulford was going. She had promised to go in to supper with him and to arrive by a certain hour. He was wondering, waiting, now, at this moment. She knew that. The house was in Eaton Square, not far off. Should she send the footman with a note to Leo, saying that she was too tired to come to the ball but that she was sitting up at home? That was what she was rapidly considering while the footman stood waiting. Leo would come, and then—presently—Lord Holme would come. And then? Then doubtless would happen the scene she longed for, longed for with a sort of almost crazy desire such as she had never felt before.

She glanced up and saw an astonished expression upon the footman's pale face. How long had she kept him there waiting? She had no idea.

"There is nothing else," she said slowly.

She paused, then added, reluctantly:

"You can go to bed."

The man went softly out of the room. As he shut the door she breathed a deep sigh, that was almost a sob. So difficult had she found it to govern herself, not to do the crazy thing.

She poured out the lemonade and put ice into it.

As she did so she made grimaces, absurd grimaces of pain and misery, like those on the faces of the two women in Mantegna's picture of Christ and the Marys in the Brera at Milan. They are grotesque, yet wonderfully moving in their pitiless realism. But tears fall from the eyes of Mantegna's women and no tears fell from Lady Holme's eyes. Still making grimaces, she sipped the lemonade. Then she put down the glass, leaned back on the sofa and shut her eyes. Her face ceased to move, and became beautiful again in its stillness. She remained motionless for a long time, trying to obtain the mastery over herself. In act she had obtained it already, but not in emotion. Indeed, the relinquishing of violence, the sending of the footman to bed, seemed to have increased the passion within her. And now she felt it rising till she was afraid of being herself, afraid of being this solitary woman, feeling intensely and able to do nothing. It seemed to her as if such a passion of jealousy, and desire for immediate expression of it in action, as flamed within her, must wreak disaster upon her like some fell disease, as if she were in immediate danger, even in immediate physical danger. She lay still like one determined to meet it bravely, without flinching, without a sign of cowardice.

But suddenly she felt that she had made a mistake in dismissing the footman, that the pain of inaction was too great for her to bear. She could not just—do nothing. She could not, and she got up swiftly and rang the bell. The man did not return. She pressed the bell again. After three or four minutes he came in, looking rather flushed and put out.

"I want you to take a note to Eaton Square," she said. "It will be ready in five minutes."

"Yes, my lady."

She went to her writing table and wrote this note to Leo Ulford:

"DEAR MR. ULFORD,—I am grieved to play you false, but I am too tired to-night to come on. Probably you are amusing yourself. I am sitting here alone over such a dull book. One can't go to bed at twelve, somehow, even if one is tired. The habit of the season's against early hours and one couldn't sleep. Be nice and come in for five minutes on your way home, and tell me all about it. I know you pass the end of the square, so it won't be out of your way.—Yours very sincerely, V. H."

After writing this note Lady Holme hesitated for a moment, then she went to a writing table, opened a drawer and took out a tiny, flat key. She enclosed it in two sheets of thick note paper, folded the note also round it, and put it into an envelope which she carefully closed. After writing Leo Ulford's name on the envelope she rang again for the footman.

"Take this to Eaton Square," she said, naming the number of the house. "And give it to Mr. Ulford yourself. Go in a hansom. When you have given Mr. Ulford the note come straight back in the hansom and let me know. After that you can go to bed. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lady."

The man went out.

Lady Holme stood up to give him the note. She remained standing after he had gone. An extraordinary sensation of relief had come to her. Action had lessened her pain, had removed much of the pressure of emotion upon her heart. For a moment she felt almost happy.

She sat down again and took up a book. It was a book of poems written by a very young girl whom she knew. There was a great deal about sorrow in the poems, and sorrow was always alluded to as a person; now flitting through a forest in the autumn among the dying leaves, now bending over a bed, now walking by the sea at sunset watching departing ships, now standing near the altar at a wedding. The poems were not good. On the other hand, they were not very bad.

They had some grace, some delicacy here and there, now and then a touch of real, if by no means exquisite, sentiment. At this moment Lady Holme found them soothing. There was a certain music in them and very little reality. They seemed to represent life as a pensive phantasmagoria of bird songs, fading flowers, dying lights, soft winds and rains and sighing echoes.

She read on and on. Sometimes a hard thought intruded itself upon her mind—the thought of Leo Ulford with the latch-key of her husband's house in his hand. That thought made the poems seem to her remarkably unlike life.

She looked at the clock. The footman had been away long enough to do his errand. Just as she was thinking this he came into the room.

"Well?" she said.

"I gave Mr. Ulford the note, my lady."

"Then you can go to bed. Good-night. I'll put out the lights here."

"Thank you, my lady."

As he went away she turned again to the poems; but now she could not read them. Her eyes rested upon them, but her mind took in nothing of their meaning. Presently—very soon—she laid the book down and sat listening. The footman had shut the drawing-room door. She got up and opened it. She wanted to hear the sound of the latch-key being put into the front door by Leo Ulford. It seemed to her as if that sound would be like the leit motif of her determination to govern, to take her own way, to strike a blow against the selfish egoism of men. After opening the door she sat down close to it and waited, listening.

Some minutes passed. Then she heard—not the key put into the hall door; it had not occurred to her that she was much too far away to hear that—but the bang of the door being shut.

Quickly she closed the drawing-room door, went back to the distant sofa, sat down upon it and began to turn over the poems once more. She even read one quite carefully. As she finished it the door was opened.

She looked up gaily to greet Leo and saw her husband coming into the room.

She was greatly startled. It had never occurred to her that Fritz was quite as likely to arrive before Leo Ulford as Leo Ulford to arrive before Fritz. Why had she never thought of so obvious a possibility? She could not imagine. The difference between the actuality and her intense and angry conception of what it would be, benumbed her mind for an instant. She was completely confused. She sat still with the book of poems on her lap, and gazed at Lord Holme as he came towards her, taking long steps and straddling his legs as if he imagined he had a horse under him. The gay expression had abruptly died away from her face and she looked almost stupid.

"Hulloa!" said Lord Holme, as he saw her.

She said nothing.

"Thought you were goin' to the Blaxtons to-night," he added.

She made a strong effort and smiled.

"I meant to, but I felt tired after the opera."

"Why don't you toddle off to bed then?"

"I feel tired, I don't feel sleepy."

Lord Holme stared at her, put his hand into his trousers pocket and pulled out his cigarette-case. Lady Holme knew that he had been in a good humour when he came home, and that the sight of her sitting up in the drawing-room had displeased him. She had seen a change come into his face. He had been looking gay. He began to look glum and turned his eyes away from her.

"What have you been up to?" she asked, with a sudden light gaiety and air of comradeship.

"Club—playin' bridge," he answered, lighting a cigarette.

He shot a glance at her sideways as he spoke, a glance that was meant to be crafty. If she had not been excited and horribly jealous, such a glance would probably have amused her, even made her laugh. Fritz's craft was very transparent. But she could not laugh now. She knew he was telling her the first lie that had occurred to him.

"Lucky?" she asked, still preserving her light and casual manner.

"Middlin'," he jerked out.

He sat down in an armchair and slowly stretched his legs, staring up at the ceiling. Lady Holme began to think rapidly, feverishly.

Had he locked the front door when he came in? Very much depended upon whether he had or had not. The servants had all gone to bed. Not one of them would see that the house was closed for the night. Fritz was a very casual person. He often forgot to do things he had promised to do, things that ought to be done. On the other hand, there were moments when his memory was excellent. If she only knew which mood had been his to-night she thought she would feel calmer. The uncertainty in which she was made mind and body tingle. If Fritz had remembered to lock the door, Leo Ulford would try to get in, fail, and go away. But if he had not remembered, at any moment Leo Ulford might walk into the room triumphantly with the latch-key in his hand. And it was nearly half-past twelve.

She wished intensely that she knew what Fritz had done.

"What's up?" he said abruptly.

"Up?" she said with an uncontrollable start.

"Yes, with you?"

"Nothing. What d'you mean?"

"Why, you looked as if—don't you b'lieve I've been playin' bridge?"

"Of course I do. Really, Fritz, how absurd you are!"

It was evident that he, too, was not quite easy to-night. If he had a conscience, surely it was pricking him. Fierce anger flamed up again suddenly in Lady Holme, and the longing to lash her husband. Yet even this anger did not take away the anxiety that beset her, the wish that she had not done the crazy thing. The fact of her husband's return before Leo's arrival seemed to have altered her action, made it far more damning. To have been found with Leo would have been compromising, would have roused Fritz's anger. She wanted to rouse his anger. She had meant to rouse it. But when she looked at Fritz she did not like the thought of Leo walking in at this hour holding the latch-key in his hand. What had Fritz done that night to Rupert Carey? What would he do to-night if—?

"What the deuce is up with you?"

Lord Holme drew in his legs, sat up and stared with a sort of uneasy inquiry which he tried to make hard. She laughed quickly, nervously.

"I'm tired, I tell you. It was awfully hot at the opera."

She put some more ice into the lemonade, and added:

"By the way, Fritz, I suppose you locked up all right?"

"Locked up what?"

"The front door. All the servants have gone to bed, you know."

No sooner had she spoken the last words than she regretted them. If Leo did get in they took away all excuse. She might have pretended he had been let in. He would have had to back her up. It would have been mean of her, of course. Still, seeing her husband there, Leo would have understood, would have forgiven her. Women are always forgiven such subterfuges in unfortunate moments. What a fool she was to-night!

"That don't matter," said her husband, shortly.

"But—but it does. You know how many burglaries there are. Why, only the other night Mrs. Arthur came home from a ball and met two men on the stairs."

"I pity any men I found on my stairs," he returned composedly, touching the muscle of his left arm with his right hand.

He chuckled.

"They'd be sorry for themselves, I'll bet," he added.

He put down his cigarette and took out another slowly, leisurely. Lady Holme longed to strike him. His conceited composure added fuel to the flame of her anxiety.

"Well, anyhow, I don't care to run these risks in a place like London, Fritz," she said almost angrily. "Have you locked up or not?"

"Damned if I remember," he drawled.

She did not know whether he was deliberately trying to irritate her or whether he really had forgotten, but she felt it impossible to remain any longer in uncertainty.

"Very well, then, I shall go down and see," she said.

And she laid the book of poems on a table and prepared to get up from the sofa.

"Rot!" said Lord Holme; "if you're nervous, I'll go."

She leaned back.

"Very well."

"In a minute."

He struck a match and let it out.

"Do go now, there's a good dog," she said coaxingly.

He struck another match and held it head downwards.

"You needn't hurry a feller."

He tapped his cigarette gently on his knee, and applied the flame to it.

"That's better."

Lady Holme moved violently on the sofa. She had a pricking sensation all over her body, and her face felt suddenly very hot, as if she had fever. A ridiculous, but painful idea started up suddenly in her mind. Could Fritz suspect anything? Was he playing with her? She dismissed it at once as the distorted child of a guilty conscience. Fritz was not that sort of man. He might be a brute sometimes, but he was never a subtle brute. He blew two thin lines of smoke out through his nostrils, now with a sort of sensuous, almost languid, deliberation, and watched them fade away in the brilliantly-lit room. Lady Holme resolved to adopt another manner, more in accord with her condition of tense nervousness.

"When I ask you to do a thing, Fritz, you might have the decency to do it," she said sharply. "You're forgetting what's due to me—to any woman."

"Don't fuss at this time of night."

"I want to go to bed, but I'm not going till I know the house is properly shut up. Please go at once and see."

"I never knew you were such a coward," he rejoined without stirring. "Who was at the opera?"

"I won't talk to you till you do what I ask."

"That's a staggerin' blow."

She sprang up with an exclamation of anger. Her nerves were on edge and she felt inclined to scream out.

"I never thought you could be so—such a cad to a woman, Fritz," she said.

She moved towards the door. As she did so she heard a cab in the square outside, a rattle of wheels, then silence. It had stopped. Her heart seemed to stand still too. She knew now that she was a coward, though not in the way Fritz meant. She was a coward with regard to him. Her jealousy had prompted her to do a mad thing. In doing it she had actually meant to produce a violent scene. It had seemed to her that such a scene would relieve the tension of her nerves, of her heart, would clear the air. But now that the scene seemed imminent—if Fritz had forgotten, and she was certain he had forgotten, to lock the door—she felt heart and nerves were failing her. She felt that she had risked too much, far too much. With almost incredible swiftness she remembered her imprudence in speaking to Carey at Arkell House and how it had only served to put a weapon into her husband's hand, a weapon he had not scrupled to use in his selfish way to further his own pleasure and her distress. That stupid failure had not sufficiently warned her, and now she was on the edge of some greater disaster. She was positive that Leo Ulford was in the cab which had just stopped, and it was too late now to prevent him from entering the house. Lord Holme had got up from his chair and stood facing her. He looked quite pleasant. She thought of the change that would come into his face in a moment and turned cold.

"Don't cut up so deuced rough," he said; "I'll go and lock up."

So he had forgotten. He took a step towards the drawing-room door. But now she felt that at all costs she must prevent him from going downstairs, must gain a moment somehow. Suddenly she swayed slightly.

"I feel—awfully faint," she said.

She went feebly, but quickly, to the window which looked on to the Square, drew away the curtain, opened the window and leaned out. The cab had stopped before their door, and she saw Leo Ulford standing on the pavement with his back to the house. He was feeling in his pocket, evidently for some money to give to the cabman. If she could only attract his attention somehow and send him away! She glanced back. Fritz was coming towards her with a look of surprise on his face.

"Leave me alone," she said unevenly. "I only want some air."

"But—"

"Leave me—oh, do leave me alone!"

He stopped, but stood staring at her in blank amazement. She dared not do anything. Leo Ulford stretched out his arm towards the cabman, who bent down from his perch. He took the money, looked at it, then bent down again, showing it to Leo and muttering something. Doubtless he was saying that it was not enough. She turned round again sharply to Fritz.

"Fritz," she said, "be a good dog. Go upstairs to my room and fetch me some eau de Cologne, will you?"

"But—"

"It's on my dressing-table—the gold bottle on the right. You know. I feel so bad. I'll stay here. The air will bring me round perhaps."

She caught hold of the curtain, like a person on the point of swooning.

"All right," he said, and he went out of the room.

She watched till he was gone, then darted to the window and leaned out.

She was too late. The cab was driving off and Leo was gone. He must have entered the house.



CHAPTER XIII

BEFORE she had time to leave the window she heard a step in the room. She turned and saw Leo Ulford, smiling broadly—like a great boy—and holding up the latch-key she had sent him. At the sight of her face his smile died away.

"Go—go!" she whispered, putting out her hand. "Go at once!"

"Go! But you told me—"

"Go! My husband's come back. He's in the house. Go quickly. Don't make a sound. I'll explain to-morrow."

She made a rapid, repeated gesture of her hands towards the door, frowning. Leo Ulford stood for an instant looking heavy and sulky, then, pushing out his rosy lips in a sort of indignant pout, he swung round on his heels. As he did so, Lord Holme came into the room holding the bottle of eau de Cologne. When he saw Leo he stopped. Leo stopped too, and they stood for a moment staring at each other. Lady Holme, who was still by the open window, did not move. There was complete silence in the room. Then Leo dropped the latch-key. It fell on the thick carpet without a noise. He made a hasty, lumbering movement to pick it up, but Lord Holme was too quick for him. When Lady Holme saw the key in her husband's hand she moved at last and came forward into the middle of the room.

"Mr. Ulford's come to tell me about the Blaxtons' dance," she said.

She spoke in her usual light voice, without tremor or uncertainty. Her face was perfectly calm and smiling. Leo Ulford cleared his throat.

"Yes," he said loudly, "about the Blaxtons' dance."

Lord Holme stood looking at the latch-key. Suddenly his face swelled up and became bloated, and large veins stood out in his brown forehead.

"What's this key?" he said.

He held it out towards his wife. Neither she nor Leo Ulford replied to his question.

"What's this key?" he repeated.

"The key of Mr. Ulford's house, I suppose," said Lady Holme. "How should I know?"

"I'm not askin' you," said her husband.

He came a step nearer to Leo.

"Why the devil don't you answer?" he said to him.

"It's my latch-key," said Leo, with an attempt at a laugh.

Lord Holme flung it in his face.

"You damned liar!" he said. "It's mine."

And he struck him full in the face where the key had just struck him.

Leo returned the blow. When she saw that, Lady Holme passed the two men and went quickly out of the room, shutting the door behind her. Holding her hands over her ears, she hurried upstairs to her bedroom. It was in darkness. She felt about on the wall for the button that turned on the electric light, but could not find it. Her hands, usually deft and certain in their movements, seemed to have lost the sense of touch. It was as if they had abruptly been deprived of their minds. She felt and felt. She knew the button was there. Suddenly the room was full of light. Without being aware of it she had found the button and turned it. In the light she looked down at her hands and saw that they were trembling violently. She went to the door and shut it. Then she sat down on the sofa at the foot of the bed. She clasped her hands together in her lap, but they went on trembling. Pulses were beating in her eyelids. She felt utterly degraded, like a scrupulously clean person who has been rolled in the dirt. And she fancied she heard a faint and mysterious sound, pathetic and terrible, but very far away—the white angel in her weeping.

And the believers in the angel—were they weeping too?

She found herself wondering as a sleeper wonders in a dream.

Presently she got up. She could not sit there and see her hands trembling. She did not walk about the room, but went over to the dressing-table and stood by it, resting her hands upon it and leaning forward. The attitude seemed to relieve her. She remained there for a long time, scarcely thinking at all, only feeling degraded, unclean. The sight of physical violence in her own drawing-room, caused by her, had worked havoc in her. She had always thought she understood the brute in man. She had often consciously administered to it. She had coaxed it, flattered it, played upon it even—surely—loved it. Now she had suddenly seen it rush out into the full light, and it had turned her sick.

The gold things on the dressing-table—bottles, brushes, boxes, trays—looked offensive. They were like lies against life, frauds. Everything in the pretty room was like a lie and a fraud. There ought to be dirt, ugliness about her. She ought to stand with her feet in mud and look on blackness. The angel in her shuddered at the siren in her now, as at a witch with power to evoke Satanic things, and she forgot the trembling of her hands in the sensation of the trembling of her soul. The blow of Fritz, the blow of Leo Ulford, had both struck her. She felt a beaten creature.

The door opened. She did not turn round, but she saw in the glass her husband come in. His coat was torn. His waistcoat and shirt were almost in rags. There was blood on his face and on his right hand. In his eyes there was an extraordinary light, utterly unlike the light of intelligence, but brilliant, startling; flame from the fire by which the animal in human nature warms itself. In the glass she saw him look at her. The light seemed to stream over her, to scorch her. He went into his dressing-room without a word, and she heard the noise of water being poured out and used for washing. He must be bathing his wounds, getting rid of the red stains.

She sat down on the sofa at the foot of the bed and listened to the noise of the water. At last it stopped and she heard drawers being violently opened and shut, then a tearing sound. After a silence her husband came into the room again with his forehead bound up in a silk handkerchief, which was awkwardly knotted behind his head. Part of another silk handkerchief was loosely tied round his right hand. He came forward, stood in front of her and looked at her, and she saw now that there was an expression almost of exultation on his face. She felt something fall into her lap. It was the latch-key she had sent to Leo Ulford.

"I can tell you he's sorry he ever saw that—damned sorry," said Lord Holme.

And he laughed.

Lady Holme took the key up carefully and put it down on the sofa. She was realising something, realising that her husband was feeling happy. When she had laid down the key she looked up at him and there was an intense scrutiny in her eyes. Suddenly it seemed to her as if she were standing up and looking down on him, as if she were the judge, he the culprit in this matter. The numbness left her mind. She was able to think swiftly again and her hands stopped trembling. That look of exultation in her husband's eyes had changed everything.

"Sit down, I want to speak to you," she said.

She was surprised by the calm sound of her own voice.

Lord Holme looked astonished. He shifted the bandage on his hand and stood where he was.

"Sit down," she repeated.

"Well!" he said.

And he sat down.

"I suppose you came up here to turn me out of the house?" she said.

"You deserve it," he muttered.

But even now he did not look angry. There was a sort of savage glow on his face. It was evident that the violent physical effort he had just made, and the success of it, had irresistibly swept away his fury for the moment. It might return. Probably it would return. But for the moment it was gone. Lady Holme knew Fritz, and she knew that he was feeling good all over. The fact that he could feel thus in such circumstances set the brute in him before her as it had never been set before—in a glare of light.

"And what do you deserve?" she asked.

All her terror had gone utterly. She felt mistress of herself.

"When I went to thrash Carey he was so drunk I couldn't touch him. This feller showed fight but he was a baby in my hands. I could do anything I liked with him," said Lord Holme. "Gad! Talk of boxin'—"

He looked at his bandaged hand and laughed again triumphantly. Then, suddenly, a sense of other things than his physical strength seemed to return upon him. His face changed, grew lowering, and he thrust forward his under jaw, opening his mouth to speak. Lady Holme did not give him time.

"Yes, I sent Leo Ulford the latch-key," she said. "You needn't ask. I sent it, and told him to come to-night. D'you know why?"

Lord Holme's face grew scarlet.

"Because you're a—"

She stopped him before he could say the irrevocable word.

"Because I mean to have the same liberty as the man I've married," she said. "I asked Leo Ulford here, and I intended you should find him here."

"You didn't. You thought I wasn't comin' home."

"Why should I have thought such a thing?" she said, swiftly, sharply.

Her voice had an edge to it.

"You meant not to come home, then?"

She read his stupidity at a glance, the guilty mind that had blundered, thinking its intention known when it was not known. He began to deny it, but she stopped him. At this moment, and exactly when she ought surely to have been crushed by the weight of Fritz's fury, she dominated him. Afterwards she wondered at herself, but not now.

"You meant not to come home?"

For once Lord Holme showed a certain adroitness. Instead of replying to his wife he retorted:

"You meant me to find Ulford here! That's a good 'un! Why, you tried all you knew to keep him out."

"Yes."

"Well, then?"

"I wanted—but you'd never understand."

"He does," said Lord Holme.

He laughed again, got up and walked about the room, fingering his bandages. Then suddenly, he turned on Lady Holme and said savagely:

"And you do."

"I?"

"Yes, you. There's lots of fellers that would—"

"Stop!" said Lady Holme, in a voice of sharp decision.

She got up too. She felt that she could not say what she meant to say sitting down.

"Fritz," she added, "you're a fool. You may be worse. I believe you are. But one thing's certain—you're a fool. Even in wickedness you're a blunderer."

"And what are you?" he said.

"I!" she answered, coming a step nearer. "I'm not wicked."

A sudden, strange desire came to her, a desire—as she had slangily expressed it to Robin Pierce—to "trot out" the white angel whom she had for so long ignored or even brow-beaten. Was the white angel there? Some there were who believed so. Robin Pierce, Sir Donald, perhaps others. And these few believers gave Lady Holme courage. She remembered them, she relied on them at this moment.

"I'm not wicked," she repeated.

She looked into her husband's face.

"Don't you know that?"

He was silent.

"Perhaps you'd rather I was," she continued. "Don't men prefer it?"

He stared first at her, then at the carpet. A puzzled look came into his face.

"But I don't care," she said, gathering resolution, and secretly calling, calling on the hidden woman, yet always with a doubt as to whether she was there in her place of concealment. "I don't care. I can't change my nature because of that. And surely—surely there must be some men who prefer refinement to vulgarity, purity to—"

"Ulford, eh?" he interrupted.

The retort struck like a whip on Lady Holme's temper. She forgot the believers in the angel and the angel too.

"How dare you?" she exclaimed. "As if I—"

He took up the latch-key and thrust it into her face. His sense of physical triumph was obviously dying away, his sense of personal outrage returning.

"Good women don't do things like that," he said. "If it was known in London you'd be done for."

"And you—may you do what you like openly, brazenly?"

"Men's different," he said.

The words and the satisfied way in which they were said made Lady Holme feel suddenly almost mad with rage. The truth of the statement, and the disgrace that it was truth, stirred her to the depths. At that moment she hated her husband, she hated all men. She remembered what Lady Cardington had said in the carriage as they were driving away from the Carlton after Mrs. Wolfstein's lunch, and her sense of impotent fury was made more bitter by the consciousness that women had chosen that men should be "different," or at least—if not that—had smilingly given them a license to be so. She wanted to say, to call out, so much that she said nothing. Lord Holme thought that for once he had been clever, almost intellectual. This was indeed a night of many triumphs for him. An intoxication of power surged up to his brain.

"Men's made different and treated differently," he said. "And they'd never stand anything else."

Lady Holme sat down again on the sofa. She put her right hand on her left hand and held it tightly in her lap.

"You mean," she said, in a hard, quiet voice, "that you may humiliate your wife in the eyes of London and that she must just pretend that she enjoys it and go on being devoted to you? Well, I will not do either the one or the other. I will not endure humiliation quietly, and as to my devotion to you—I daresay it wouldn't take much to kill it. Perhaps it's dead already."

No lie, perhaps, ever sounded more like truth than hers. At that moment she thought that probably it was truth.

"Eh?" said Lord Holme.

He looked suddenly less triumphant. His blunt features seemed altered in shape by the expression of blatant, boyish surprise, even amazement, that overspread them. His wife saw that, despite the incident of Leo Ulford's midnight visit, Fritz had not really suspected her of the uttermost faithlessness, that it had not occurred to him that perhaps her love for him was dead, that love was alive in her for another man. Had his conceit then no limits?

And then suddenly another thought flashed into her mind. Was he, too, a firm, even a fanatical, believer in the angel? She had never numbered Fritz among that little company of believers. Him she had always set among the men who worship the sirens of the world. But now—? Can there be two men in one man as there can be two women in one woman? Suddenly Fritz was new to her, newer to her than on the day when she first met him. And he was complex. Fritz complex! She changed the word conceit. She called it trust. And tears rushed into her eyes. There were tears in her heart too. She looked up at her husband. The silk bandage over his forehead had been white. Now it was faintly red. As she looked she thought that the colour of the red deepened.

"Come here, Fritz," she said softly.

He moved nearer.

"Bend down!"

"Eh?"

"Bend down your head."

He bent down his huge form with a movement that had in it some resemblance to the movement of a child. She put up her hand and touched the bandage where it was red. She took her hand away. It was damp.

A moment later Fritz was sitting in a low chair by the wash-hand stand in an obedient attitude, and a woman—was she siren or angel?—was bathing an ugly wound.



CHAPTER XIV

AFTER that night Lady Holme began to do something she had never done before—to idealise her husband. Hitherto she had loved him without weaving pretty fancies round him, loved him crudely for his strength, his animalism, his powerful egoism and imperturbable self-satisfaction. She had loved him almost as a savage woman might love, though without her sense of slavery. Now a change came over her. She thought of Fritz in a different way, the new Fritz, the Fritz who was a believer in the angel. It seemed to her that he could be kept faithful most easily, most surely, by such an appeal as Robin Pierce would have loved. She had sought to rouse, to play upon the instincts of the primitive man. She had not gone very far, it is true, but her methods had been common, ordinary. She had undervalued Fritz's nature. That was what she felt now. He had behaved badly to her, had wronged her, but he had believed in her very much. She resolved to make his belief more intense. An expression on his face—only that—had wrought a vital change in her feeling towards him, her conception of him. She ranged him henceforth with Sir Donald, with Robin Pierce. He stood among the believers in the angel.

She called upon the angel passionately, feverishly.

There was strength in Lady Holme's character, and not merely strength of temper. When she was roused, confident, she could be resolute, persistent; could shut her eyes to side issues and go onward looking straight before her. Now she went onward and she felt a new force within her, a force that would not condescend to pettiness, to any groping in the mud.

Lord Holme was puzzled. He felt the change in his wife, but did not understand it. Since the fracas with Leo Ulford their relations had slightly altered. Vaguely, confusedly, he was conscious of being pitied, yes, surely pitied by his wife. She shed a faint compassion, like a light cloud, over the glory of his wrongdoing. And the glory was abated. He felt a little doubtful of himself, almost as a son feels sometimes in the presence of his mother. For the first time he began to think of himself, now and then, as the inferior of his wife, began even, now and then, to think of man as the inferior of woman—in certain ways. Such a state of mind was very novel in him. He stared at it as a baby stares at its toes, with round amazement, inwardly saying, "Is this phenomenon part of me?"

There was a new gentleness in Viola, a new tenderness. Both put him—as one lifted and dropped—a step below her. He pulled his bronze moustache over it with vigour.

His wife showed no desire to control his proceedings, to know what he was about. When she spoke of Miss Schley she spoke kindly, sympathetically, but with a dainty, delicate pity, as one who secretly murmurs, "If she had only had a chance!" Lord Holme began to think it a sad thing that she had not had a chance. The mere thought sent the American a step down from her throne. She stood below him now, as he stood below Viola. It seemed to him that there was less resemblance between his wife and Miss Schley than he had fancied. He even said so to Lady Holme. The angel smiled. Somebody else in her smiled too. Once he remarked to the angel, a propos de bottes, "We men are awful brutes sometimes." Then he paused. As she said nothing, only looked very kind, he added, "I'll bet you think so, Vi?"

It sounded like a question, but she preferred to give no answer, and he walked away shaking his head over the brutishness of men.

The believers in the angel naturally welcomed the development in Lady Holme and the unbelievers laughed at it, especially those who had been at Arkell House and those who had been influenced by Pimpernel Schley's clever imitation. One night at the opera, when Tannhauser was being given, Mr. Bry said of it, "I seem to hear the voice of Venus raised in the prayer of Elizabeth." Mrs. Wolfstein lifted large eyebrows over it, and remarked to Henry, in exceptionally guttural German:

"If this goes on Pimpernel's imitation will soon be completely out of date."

To be out of date—in Mrs. Wolfstein's opinion—was to be irremediably damned. Lady Cardington, Sir Donald Ulford, and one or two others began to feel as if their dream took form and stepped out of the mystic realm towards the light of day. Sir Donald seemed specially moved by the change. It was almost as if something within him blossomed, warmed by the breath of spring.

Lady Holme wondered whether he knew of the fight between her husband and his son. She dared not ask him and he only mentioned Leo once. Then he said that Leo had gone down to his wife's country place in Hertfordshire. Lady Holme could not tell by his intonation whether he had guessed that there was a special reason for this departure. She was glad Leo had gone. The developing angel did not want to meet the man who had suffered from the siren's common conduct. Leo was not worth much. She knew that. But she realised now the meanness of having used him merely as a weapon against Fritz, and not only the meanness, but the vulgarity of the action. There were moments in which she was fully conscious that, despite her rank, she had not endured unsmirched close contact with the rampant commonness of London.

One of the last great events of the season was to be a charity concert, got up by a Royal Princess in connection with a committee of well-known women to start a club for soldiers and sailors. Various amateurs and professionals were asked to take part in it, among them Lady Holme and Miss Schley. The latter had already accepted the invitation when Lady Holme received the Royal request, which was made viva voce and was followed by a statement about the composition of the programme, in which "that clever Miss Schley" was named.

Lady Holme hesitated. She had not met the American for some time and did not wish to meet her. Since she had bathed her husband's wound she knew—she could not have told how—that Miss Schley's power over him had lessened. She did not know what had happened between them. She did not know that anything had happened. And, as part of this new effort of hers, she had had the strength to beat down the vehement, the terrible curiosity—cold steel and fire combined—that is a part of jealousy. That curiosity, she told herself, belonged to the siren, not to the angel. But at this Royal request her temper waked, and with it many other children of her temperament. It was as if she had driven them into a dark cave and had rolled a great stone to the cave's mouth. Now the stone was pushed back, and in the darkness she heard them stirring, whispering, preparing to come forth.

The Royal lady looked slightly surprised. She coughed and glanced at a watch she wore at her side.

"I shall be delighted to do anything, ma'am," Lady Holme said quickly.

When she received the programme she found that her two songs came immediately after "Some Imitations" by Miss Pimpernel Schley.

She stood for a moment with the programme in her hand.

"Some Imitations"; there was a certain crudeness about the statement, a crudeness and an indefiniteness combined. Who were to be the victims? At this moment, perhaps, they were being studied. Was she to be pilloried again as she had been pilloried that night at the British Theatre? The calm malice of the American was capable of any impudent act. It seemed to Lady Holme that she had perhaps been very foolish in promising to appear in the same programme with Miss Schley. Was it by accident that their names were put together? Lady Holme did not know who had arranged the order of the performances, but it occurred to her that there was attraction to the public in the contiguity, and that probably it was a matter of design. No other two women had been discussed and compared, smiled over and whispered about that season by Society as she and Miss Schley had been.

For a moment, while she looked at the programme, she thought of the strange complications of feeling that are surely the fruit of an extreme civilisation. She saw herself caught in a spider's web of apparently frail, yet really powerful, threads spun by an invisible spider. Her world was full of gossamer playing the part of iron, of gossamer that was compelling, that made and kept prisoners. What freedom was there for her and women like her, what reality of freedom? Even beauty, birth, money were gossamer to hold the fly. For they concentrated the gaze of those terrible watchful eyes which govern lives, dominating actions, even dominating thoughts.

She moved, had always moved, in a maze of complications. She saw them tiny yet intense, like ants in their hill. They stirred minds, hearts, as the ants stirred twigs, leaves, blossoms, and carried them to the hill for their own purposes. In this maze free will was surely lost. The beautiful woman of the world seems to the world to be a dominant being, to be imposing the yoke of her will on those around her. But is she anything but a slave?

Why were she and Miss Schley enemies? Why had they been enemies from the moment they met? There was perhaps a reason for their hostility now, a reason in Fritz. But at the beginning what reason had there been? Civilisation manufactures reasons as the spider manufactures threads, because it is the deadly enemy of peace—manufactures reasons for all those thoughts and actions which are destructive of inward and exterior peace.

For a moment it seemed to Lady Holme as if she and the American were merely victims of the morbid conditions amid which they lived; conditions which caused the natural vanity of women to become a destroying fever, the natural striving of women to please a venomous battle, the natural desire of women to be loved a fracas, in which clothes were the armour, modes of hair-dressing, manicure, perfumes, dyes, powder-puffs the weapons.

What a tremendous, noisy nothingness it was, this state of being! How could an angel be natural in it,—be an angel at all?

She laid down the programme and sighed. She felt a vague yet violent desire for release, for a fierce change, for something that would brush away the spider's web and set free her wings. Yet where would she fly? She did not know; probably against a window-pane. And the change would never come. She and Fritz—what could they ever be but a successful couple known in a certain world and never moving beyond its orbit?

Perhaps for the first time the longing that she had often expressed in her singing, obedient to poet and composer, invaded her own soul. Without music she was what with music she had often seemed to be—a creature of wayward and romantic desires, a yearning spirit, a soaring flame.

At that moment she could have sung better than she had ever sung.

On the programme the names of her songs did not appear. They were represented by the letters A and B. She had not decided yet what she would sing. But now, moved by feeling to the longing for some action in which she might express it, she resolved to sing something in which she could at least flutter the wings she longed to free, something in which the angel could lift its voice, something that would delight the believers in the angel and be as far removed from Miss Schley's imitations as possible.

After a time she chose two songs. One was English, by a young composer, and was called "Away." It breathed something of the spirit of the East. The man who had written it had travelled much in the East, had drawn into his lungs the air, into his nostrils the perfume, into his soul the meaning of desert places. There was distance in his music. There was mystery. There was the call of the God of Gold who lives in the sun. There was the sound of feet that travel. The second song she chose was French. The poem was derived from a writing of Jalalu'd dinu'r Rumi, and told this story.

One day a man came to knock upon the door of the being he loved. A voice cried from within the house, "Qui est la?" "C'est moi!" replied the man. There was a pause. Then the voice answered, "This house cannot shelter us both together." Sadly the lover went away, went into the great solitude, fasted and prayed. When a long year had passed he came once more to the house of the one he loved, and struck again upon the door. The voice from within cried, "Qui est la?" "C'est toi!" whispered the lover. Then the door was opened swiftly and he passed in with outstretched arms.

Having decided that she would sing these two songs, Lady Holme sat down to go through them at the piano. Just as she struck the first chord of the desert song a footman came in to know whether she was at home to Lady Cardington. She answered "Yes." In her present mood she longed to give out her feeling to an audience, and Lady Cardington was very sympathetic.

In a minute she came in, looking as usual blanched and tired, dressed in black with some pale yellow roses in the front of her gown. Seeing Lady Holme at the piano she said, in her low voice with a thrill in it:

"You are singing? Let me listen, let me listen."

She did not come up to shake hands, but at once sat down at a short distance from the piano, leaned back, and gazed at Lady Holme with a strange expression of weary, yet almost passionate, expectation.

Lady Holme looked at her and at the desert song. Suddenly she thought she would not sing it to Lady Cardington. There was too wild a spell in it for this auditor. She played a little prelude and sang an Italian song, full, as a warm flower of sweetness, of the sweetness of love. The refrain was soft as golden honey, soft and languorous, strangely sweet and sad. There was an exquisite music in the words of the refrain, and the music they were set to made their appeal more clinging, like the appeal of white arms, of red, parting lips.

"Torna in fior di giovinezza Isaotta Blanzesmano, Dice: Tutto al mondo e vano: Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."

Tears came into Lady Cardington's eyes as she listened, brimmed over and fell down upon her blanched cheeks. Each time the refrain recurred she moved her lips: "Dice: Tutto al mondo e vano: Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."

Lady Holme's voice was like honey as she sang, and tears were in her eyes too. Each time the refrain fell from her heart she seemed to see another world, empty of gossamer threads, a world of spread wings, a world of—but such poetry and music do not tell you! Nor can you imagine. You can only dream and wonder, as when you look at the horizon line and pray for the things beyond.

"Tutto—tutto al mondo a vano: Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."

"Why do you sing like that to-day?" said Lady Cardington, wiping her eyes gently.

"I feel like that to-day," Lady Holme said, keeping her hands on the keys in the last chord. There was a vagueness in her eyes, a sort of faint cloud of fear. While she was singing she had thought, "Have I known the love that shows the vanity of the world? Have I known the love in which alone all sweetness lives?" The thought had come in like a firefly through an open window. "Have I? Have I?"

And something within her felt a stab of pain, something within her soul and yet surely a thousand miles away.

"Tutto—tutto al mondo e vano," murmured Lady Cardington. "We feel that and we feel it, and—do you?"

"To-day I seem to," answered Lady Holme.

"When you sing that song you look like the love that gives all sweetness to men. Sing like that, look like that, and you—If Sir Donald had heard you!"

Lady Holme got up from the piano.

"Sir Donald!" she said.

She came to sit down near Lady Cardington.

"Sir Donald! Why do you say that?"

And she searched Lady Cardington's eyes with eyes full of inquiry.

Lady Cardington looked away. The wistful power that generally seemed a part of her personality had surely died out in her. There was something nervous in her expression, deprecating in her attitude.

"Why do you speak about Sir Donald?" Lady Holme said.

"Don't you know?"

Lady Cardington looked up. There was an extraordinary sadness in her eyes, mingled with a faint defiance.

"Know what?"

"That Sir Donald is madly in love with you?"

"Sir Donald! Sir Donald—madly anything!"

She laughed, not as if she were amused, but as if she wished to do something else and chose to laugh instead. Lady Cardington sat straight up.

"You don't understand anything but youth," she said.

There was a sound of keen bitterness in her low voice.

"And yet," she added, after a pause, "you can sing till you break the heart of age—break its heart."

Suddenly she burst into a flood of tears. Lady Holme was so surprised that she did absolutely nothing, did not attempt to console, to inquire. She sat and looked at Lady Cardington's tall figure swayed by grief, listened to the sound of her hoarse, gasping sobs. And then, abruptly, as if someone came into the room and told her, she understood.

"You love Sir Donald," she said.

Lady Cardington looked up. Her tear-stained, distorted face seemed very old.

"We both regret the same thing in the same way," she said. "We were both wretched in—in the time when we ought to have been happy. I thought—I had a ridiculous idea we might console each other. You shattered my hope."

"I'm sorry," Lady Holme said.

And she said it with more tenderness than she had ever before used to a woman.

Lady Cardington pressed a pocket-handkerchief against her eyes.

"Sing me that song again," she whispered. "Don't say anything more. Just sing it again and I'll go."

Lady Holme went to the piano.

"Torna in fior di giovinezza Isaotta Blanzesmano, Dice: Tutto al mondo a vano: Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."

When the last note died away she looked towards the sofa. Lady Cardington was gone. Lady Holme leaned her arm on the piano and put her chin in her hand.

"How awful to be old!" she thought.

Half aloud she repeated the last words of the refrain: "Nell'amore ogni dolcezza." And then she murmured:

"Poor Sir Donald!"

And then she repeated, "Poor—" and stopped. Again the faint cloud of fear was in her eyes.



CHAPTER XV

THE Charity Concert was to be given in Manchester House, one of the private palaces of London, and as Royalty had promised to be present, all the tickets were quickly sold. Among those who bought them were most of the guests who had been present at the Holmes' dinner-party when Lady Holme lost her temper and was consoled by Robin Pierce. Robin of course was in Rome, but Lady Cardington, Lady Manby, Mrs. Wolfstein, Sir Donald, Mr. Bry took seats. Rupert Carey also bought a ticket. He was not invited to great houses any more, but on this public occasion no one with a guinea to spend was unwelcome. To Lady Holme's surprise the day before the concert Fritz informed her that he was going too.

"You, Fritz!" she exclaimed. "But it's in the afternoon."

"What o' that?"

"You'll be bored to death. You'll go to sleep. Probably you'll snore."

"Not I."

He straddled his legs and looked attentively at the toes of his boots. Lady Holme wondered why he was going. Had Miss Schley made a point of it? She longed to know. The cruel curiosity which the angel was ever trying to beat down rose up in her powerfully.

"I say—"

Her husband was speaking with some hesitation.

"Well?"

"Let's have a squint at the programme, will you?"

"Here it is."

She gave it to him and watched him narrowly as he looked quickly over it.

"Hulloa!" he said.

"What's the matter?"

"Some Imitations," he said. "What's that mean?"

"Didn't you know Miss Schley was a mimic?"

"A mimic—not I! She's an actress."

"Yes—now."

"Now? When was she anythin' else?"

"When she began in America. She was a mimic in the music-halls."

"The deuce she was!"

He stood looking very grave and puzzled for a minute, then he stared hard at his wife.

"What did she mimic?"

"I don't know—people."

Again there was a silence. Then he said—

"I say, I don't know that I want you to sing at that affair to-morrow."

"But I must. Why not?"

He hesitated, shifting from one foot to the other almost like a great boy.

"I don't know what she's up to," he answered at last.

"Miss Schley?"

"Ah!"

Lady Holme felt her heart beat faster. Was her husband going to open up a discussion of the thing that had been turning her life to gall during these last weeks—his flirtation, his liaison—if it were a liaison; she did not know—with the American? The woman who had begun to idealise Fritz and the woman who was desperately jealous of him both seemed to be quivering within her.

"Do you mean—?" she began.

She stopped, then spoke again in a quiet voice.

"Do you mean that you think Miss Schley is going to do something unusual at the concert tomorrow?"

"I dunno. She's the devil."

There was a reluctant admiration in his voice, as there always is in the voice of a man when he describes a woman as gifted with infernal attributes, and this sound stung Lady Holme. It seemed to set that angel upon whom she was calling in the dust, to make of that angel a puppet, an impotent, even a contemptible thing.

"My dear Fritz," she said in a rather loud, clear voice, like the voice of one speaking to a child, "my dear Fritz, you're surely aware that I have been the subject of Miss Schley's talent ever since she arrived in London?"

"You! What d'you mean?"

"You surely can't be so blind as not to have seen what all London has seen?"

"What's all London seen?'

"Why, that Miss Schley's been mimicking me!"

"Mimickin' you!"

The brown of his large cheeks was invaded by red.

"But you have noticed it. I remember your speaking about it."

"Not I!" he exclaimed with energy.

"Yes. You spoke of the likeness between us, in expression, in ways of looking and moving."

"That—I thought it was natural."

"You thought it was natural?"

There was a profound, if very bitter, compassion in her voice.

"Poor old boy!" she added.

Lord Holme looked desperately uncomfortable. His legs were in a most violent, even a most pathetic commotion, and he tugged his moustache with the fingers of both hands.

"Damned cheek!" he muttered. "Damned cheek!"

He turned suddenly as if he were going to stride about the room.

"Don't get angry," said his wife. "I never did."

He swung round and faced her.

"D'you mean you've always known she was mimickin' you?"

"Of course. From the very start."

His face got redder.

"I'll teach her to let my wife alone," he muttered. "To dare—my wife!"

"I'm afraid it's a little late in the day to begin now," Lady Holme said. "Society's been laughing over it, and your apparent appreciation of it, the best part of the season."

"My what?"

"Your apparent enjoyment of the performance."

And then she went quietly out of the room and shut the door gently behind her. But directly the door was shut she became another woman. Her mouth was distorted, her eyes shone, she rushed upstairs to her bedroom, locked herself in, threw herself down on the bed and pressed her face furiously against the coverlet.

The fact that she had spoken at last to her husband of the insult she had been silently enduring, the insult he had made so far more bitter than it need have been by his conduct, had broken down something within her, some wall of pride behind which had long been gathering a flood of feeling. She cried now frantically, with a sort of despairing rage, cried and crushed herself against the bed, beating the pillows with her hands, grinding her teeth.

What was the use of it all? What was the use of being beautiful, of being young, rich? What was the use of having married a man she had loved? What was the use? What was the use?

"What's the use?" she sobbed the words out again and again.

For the man was a fool, Fritz was a fool. She thought of him at that moment as half-witted. For he saw nothing, nothing. He was a blind man led by his animal passions, and when at last he was forced to see, when she came and, as it were, lifted his eyelids with her fingers, and said to him, "Look! Look at what has been done to me!" he could only be angry for himself, because the insult had attained him, because she happened to be his wife. It seemed to her, while she was crying there, that stupidity combined with egoism must have the power to kill even that vital, enduring thing, a woman's love. She had begun to idealise Fritz, but how could she go on idealising him? And she began for the first time really to understand—or to begin to understand—that there actually was something within her which was hungry, unsatisfied, something which was not animal but mental, or was it spiritual?—something not sensual, not cerebral, which cried aloud for sustenance. And this something did not, could never, cry to Fritz. It knew he could not give it what it wanted. Then to whom did it cry? She did not know.

Presently she grew calmer and sat upon the bed, looking straight before her. Her mind returned upon itself. She seemed to go back to that point of time, just before Lady Cardington called, when she had the programme in her hand and thought of the gossamer threads that were as iron in her life, and in such lives as hers; then to move on to that other point of time when she laid down the programme, sighed, and was conscious of a violent desire for release, for something to come and lift a powerful hand and brush away the spider's web.

But now, returning to this further moment in her life, she asked herself what would be left to her if the spider's web were gone? The believers in the angel? Perhaps she no longer included Fritz among them. The impotence of his mind seemed to her an impotence of heart just then. He was to her like a numbed creature, incapable of movement, incapable of thought, incapable of belief. Credulity—yes, but not belief. And so, when she looked at the believers, she saw but a few people: Robin Pierce, Sir Donald—whom else?

And then she heard, as if far off, the song she would sing on the morrow at Manchester House.

"Torna in fior di giovinezza Isaotta Blanzesmano, Dice: Tutto al mondo a vano: Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."

And then she cried again, but no longer frantically; quietly, with a sort of childish despair and confusion. In her heart there had opened a dark space, a gulf. She peered into it and heard, deep down in it, hollow echoes resounding, and she recoiled from a vision of emptiness.

* * * * * * *

On the following day Fritz drove her himself to Manchester House in a new motor he had recently bought. All the morning he had stayed at home and fidgeted about the house. It was obvious to his wife that he was in an unusually distracted frame of mind. He wanted to tell her something, yet could not do so. She saw that plainly, and she felt almost certain that since their interview of the previous day he had seen Miss Schley. She fancied that there had been a scene of some kind between them, and she guessed that Fritz had been hopelessly worsted in it and was very sorry for himself. There was a beaten look in his face, a very different look from that which had startled her when he came into her room after thrashing Leo Ulford. This time, however, her curiosity was not awake, and the fact that it was not awake marked a change in her. She felt to-day as if she did not care what Fritz had been doing or was going to do. She had suffered, she had concealed her suffering, she had tried vulgarly to pay Fritz out, she had failed. At the critical moment she had played the woman after he had played the man. He had thrashed the intruder whom she was using as a weapon, and she had bathed his wounds, made much of him, idealised him. She had done what any uneducated street woman would have done for "her man." And now she had suddenly come to feel as if there had always been an emptiness in her life, as if Fritz never had, never could fill it. The abruptness of the onset of this new feeling confused her. She did not know that a woman could be subject to a change of this kind. She did not understand it, realise what it portended, what would result from it. But she felt that, for the moment, at any rate, she could not get up any excitement about Fritz, his feelings, his doings. Whenever she thought of him she thought of his blundering stupidity, his blindness, sensuality and egoism. No doubt she loved him. Only, to-day, she did not feel as if she loved him or anyone. Yet she did not feel dull. On the contrary, she was highly strung, unusually sensitive. What she was most acutely conscious of was a sensation of lonely excitement, of solitary expectation. Fritz fidgeted about the house, and the fact that he did so gave her no more concern than if a little dog had been running to and fro. She did not want him to tell her what was the matter. On the other hand, she did want him not to tell her. Simply she did not care.

He said nothing. Perhaps something in her look, her manner, kept him dumb.

When they were in the motor on the way to Manchester House, he said:

"I bet you'll cut out everybody."

"Oh, there are all sorts of stars."

"Well, mind you put 'em all out."

It was evident to her that for some reason or other he was particularly anxious she should shine that afternoon. She meant to. She knew she was going to. But she had no desire to shine in order to gratify Fritz's egoism. Probably he had just had a quarrel with Miss Schley and wanted to punish her through his wife. The idea was not a pretty one. Unfortunately that circumstance did not ensure its not being a true one.

"Mind you do, eh?" reiterated her husband, giving the steering wheel a twist and turning the car up Hamilton Place.

"I shall try to sing well, naturally," she replied coldly. "I always do."

"Of course—I know."

There was something almost servile in his manner, an anxiety which was quite foreign to it as a rule.

"That's a stunnin' dress," he added. "Keep your cloak well over it."

She said nothing.

"What's the row?" he asked. "Anythin' up?"

"I'm thinking over my songs."

"Oh, I see."

She had silenced him for the moment.

Very soon they were in a long line of carriages and motors moving slowly towards Manchester House.

"Goin' to be a deuce of a crowd," said Fritz.

"Naturally."

"Wonder who'll be there?"

"Everybody who's still in town."

She bowed to a man in a hansom.

"Who's that?"

"Plancon. He's singing."

"How long'll it be before you come on?"

"Quite an hour, I think."

"Better than bein' first, isn't it?"

"Of course."

"What are you goin' to sing?"

"Oh—"

She was about to say something impatient about his not knowing one tune from another, but she checked herself, and answered quietly:

"An Italian song and a French song."

"What about?"

"Take care of that carriage in front—love."

He looked at her sideways.

"You're the one to sing about that," he said.

She felt that he was admiring her beauty as if it were new to him. She did not care.

At last they reached Manchester House. Fritz's place was taken by his chauffeur, and they got out. The crowd was enormous. Many people recognised Lady Holme and greeted her. Others, who did not know her personally, looked at her with open curiosity. A powdered footman came to show her to the improvised artists' room. Fritz prepared to follow.

"Aren't you going into the concert-room?" she said.

"Presently."

"But—"

"I'll take you up first."

"Very well," she said. "But it isn't the least necessary."

He only stuck out his under jaw. She realised that Miss Schley would be in the artists' room and said nothing more. They made their way very slowly to the great landing on the first floor of the house, from which a maze of reception rooms opened. Mr. and Mrs. Ongrin, the immensely rich Australians who were the owners of the house, were standing there ready to receive the two Royal Princesses who were expected, and Mr. Ongrin took from a basket on a table beside him a great bouquet of honey-coloured roses, and offered it to Lady Holme with a hearty word of thanks to her for singing.